I’ve been following the Co-operative Party’s Community Britain campaign with interest. The Party is right to argue that communities are central to national renewal, and that government needs to go further and faster in giving them greater power and influence.

In our part of Derbyshire, it can feel a very long way from Whitehall and Westminster. On the ground, our parish council is the closest form of government. Most of the councillors are politically affiliated, but we put labels aside for the good of the village and have made significant progress by working together.

Across the country, town, parish and community councils come in all shapes and sizes—from “super” parishes like Northampton Town Council, serving 137,000 residents, to tiny villages that operate through a parish meeting. We are somewhere in the middle with just under 4,000 electors, and we do much of what you would expect: managing allotments and the cemetery, representing the council at the Remembrance Parade, maintaining footpaths and open spaces, and leading tree-planting initiatives.

Over the past few years, we’ve stepped up our work, much of which reflects the principles behind the Community Britain campaign. With the support of the County Council, we have increased the number of disabled parking bays in the village. We have addressed speeding through our village by creating a ‘Speedwatch’ group and by installing speed indicators. Last year we launched our Civic Award, a way of saying “thank you” to the many people who contribute so much to our community and its beautiful surroundings. In the next year, we have two major projects:

• if there has been one thing we’ve lacked, it is a village hall. Last year the Methodist Church decided to ‘decommission’ the Methodist church in the village and we have acted swiftly in securing the building for repurposing as a Community space. Revamping the building will be a major project in its own right, but once complete I firmly believe that investing in this community asset will, in time, be seen as one of the most significant decisions the parish council has ever taken;
• the development of a 12 acre field, donated by a villager, into a green space which can be used by the village.

A perhaps underappreciated consequence of the move to new unitary councils is that town and parish councils may increasingly be required to fill the void left by district councils. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill—building in some respects on the Localism Act—will make community ownership of assets a little easier, and that is welcome, but there is still much to be done to empower communities.

What we have achieved would not have been possible without an excellent Parish Clerk and her team; I wonder how many other local councils are so well supported. An active town or parish council requires good people to step forward and stand for election, and political parties need to do more to encourage their members to do so at town and parish level. It also requires government to make initiatives such as community-owned energy genuinely accessible to town and parish councils. None of these goals is impossible—but taken together, it makes for a long list for 2026.